Sunday, August 07, 2005

Chelsea over Arsenal in boring Community Shield

It was a clash of the economic titans but it wasn’t much of a football match. I missed the beginning but can’t imagine that matters much at the moment.

Chelsea beat Arsenal 2-1 in the Premiership season opening Community Shield. On 8 minutes Ivory Coast international Didier Drogba scored and doubled his tally on 60, a pair of well taken goals. With help from Tiago, Cesc Fabregas got one back late on for drama’s sake but the match ended more or less where last season ended, Chelsea out front.

For the most part the new debutants Alexander Hleb, Wright-Philips and Del Horno did reasonably well. But, honestly, if pre-season tournaments are meant to sharpen the teams up before the season, it’s not working.

I think there were a total of 82,400 missed passes and 3,400 offsides. Chelsea made 2,850 of those offsides, Hernan Crespo alone guilty of 2,500.

Gilberto Silva played quite well for Arsenal, a heartening sign from a midfield that looked stressed today.

Just got home from Cardiff. What match were you watching? It was entertaining stuff, and the other fans around seemed pretty satisfied that they'd got their money's worth.

Hleb looks awesome, Senderos looked nervy. All in all, we seemed to play better in the second half when it as "Arsenal: The Next Generation" playing. Pires and Bergkamp just weren't in it in the first half.

Perhaps arrogant but altogether TRUE...if the match was boring it was because Chelsea played large parts of the match with 10 men in the defending 3rd of the pitch like a bunch of cowards. They had better come with more than just long balls to Drogba in the future...because we will have an answer for him in the future.

I watched the match in a pub with LOTS of neutrals who said that Chelski's style of play clearly SUCKS ASS compared to Arsenals.